1 week Ago By Hamza Malick
Education is one of the most respectable and noble professions and is considered to be the most crucial imperative for a country’s progress and development. A nation’s rise and fall largely pivots on the quality of education it provides to its students. Those who fail to prioritize education are destined to lag behind in development, creativity, innovation, and technology.
In Pakistan, providing quality education to students is a pressing concern, particularly at higher levels. Quality education aims to enhance students’ knowledge, skills, attitudes, and confidence, among other personality characteristics, enabling them to reach the top echelons in their chosen fields after completing their studies. However, a significant challenge students face is the complex English language material provided in educational institutions, which has become a major stumbling block in their path to progress.
The teaching materials provided to students, often in the form of PDF files, notes, and PowerPoint presentations (PPTs), are written in complex English that is difficult even for professors to comprehend, let alone students. Since English is not the first language of the Pakistanis, they struggle to assimilate the material and often rely on friends and family members for help without being able to grasp it on their own. In the absence of proper assistance, they often resort to cramming and rote learning, which murders their rational thinking.
Shots Fired Furthermore, despite having doctorate credentials excluding the English Department, numerous professors at higher levels are not well-versed in the English language, making it far more challenging for themselves to assimilate concepts and material. When students ask challenging questions pertinent to the subject, they often become visibly nervous and fail to provide satisfactory answers due to their lack of clear understanding of the concepts and material provided to them by the university administration. I have been there, witnessed that.
The primary reasons for this unsatisfactory state of affairs are the difficulty of the material and the teachers’ lack of preparation before lectures. Many students commute long distances and spend considerable amounts to reach university, eager to learn from their esteemed teachers, but they often have to return to their homes disgruntled and disillusioned by the teachers’ lack of command over the English language and their feckless behavior. Heatwave Incoming Moreover, in many universities, teachers inadvertently encourage plagiarism by assigning projects without proper guidance, allowing students to receive good grades for subpar work, especially at the university level.
When these students eventually become teachers, they perpetuate the same ineffective methods used by their own teachers, thereby jeopardizing the future of their students. Muhammad Ali Jinnah emphasized the importance of education by stating, “Students are the nation-builders of tomorrow, and they must fully equip themselves with discipline, quality education, and training for the arduous task lying ahead of them.” A language consists of three essential elements: it is taught as a subject, and it subsumes writing and speaking skills.
Regrettably, in our country, these skills are largely taught with the sole objective of passing exams. Resultantly, students struggle to get through the language paper, and developing practical proficiency takes a far back seat. Political Theatre I vividly remember my 9th-grade days, when many of my classmates struggled to pass the English paper.
Unfortunately, this difficulty led some to drop out of school altogether. As we progressed to intermediate and then BA levels, the number of students who struggled with English continued to dwindle. While many of these students excelled in other subjects, the English language remained a significant barrier to their academic advancement.
Consequently, this language was and has become a formidable and daunting barrier for students, contributing to our alarmingly low literacy rate. Teachers, from elementary to bachelor’s level, in both public and private educational institutions, often lack proficiency in the English language. This is predominantly because they themselves have studied in these same institutions, where English language proficiency may not have been adequately taught and emphasized.
While there certainly are exceptions, the majority of teachers lack effective comprehension, communication, and grammatical subtleties of the English subject. Cartoon The dysfunctional education sector is further compromised by teachers who fail to perform their duties effectively, despite receiving handsome salaries from the government. This negligence has a detrimental impact on students’ moral development.
Merely teaching is not sufficient for students’ overall growth; teachers must instill the custom of self-study in students, which is essential for their and Pakistan’s development. If my memory serves me, in one of his addresses, the Father of the Nation said to the All Pakistan Educational Conference at Karachi, 27 November 1947, “There is an immediate and urgent need for training our people in scientific and technical education in order to build up our economic life, and we should see that our people undertake scientific, commercial, trade, and particularly, well-planned industries. I must emphasize that greater attention should be paid to technical and vocational education.
” Indian Waqf Takeover As such, I respectfully request the incumbent government, the Higher Education Commission (HEC), and the concerned functionaries to look into this matter and enhance the quality of teachers’ training programs. Furthermore, I strongly urge university administrations to scrutinize this matter, ensuring teachers provide high-quality educational materials, understand them properly, and demonstrate not satisfactory but phenomenal performance. To safeguard students’ interests and Pakistan’s future, university administrations should establish robust testing systems for prospective teachers before induction.
Unless these drastic measures are taken, the prospect of Pakistan’s bright future will continue to look bleak. Hamza Malick The writer is a columnist and academic. He can be contacted at hamza.
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